RÚV, the magical national tv channel on Iceland!

In the magical ocean between Greenland and Norway in Europe, there is a beautiful and amazing country called Iceland. It is one of the most mysterious and beautiful places on earth, where the weather never is the same and where the earth is connected with every soul and heart on island far away from nearest country. And that karma also shows on their national broadcasting service, named as RÚV which is called Sjónvapið on Iceland. Here I will focus on the TV channel and not the radio channels Ras 1 and Ras 2.

Reykjavik is the largest city with around 121.230 people. It is also the capital of Iceland. It is from here, where RÚV have been broadcasting since 30th of September 1966. This is the official national broadcasting service that serve the Icelandic people with news, cultural programs, debates, sports, tv series, movies and lot’s of children’s programing.

Here, in this article. I want you to get to know a commercial national broadcaster, that has been and is still quite unique tv channel in the stressed world.

I’ve been watching RÚV more and more because of my interest in the Icelandic language and after they also re-designed the channel gave me the interest for the channel itself also. Yes, I am a person loving to see tv channels identity marketing.

I must say that I’ve never been touched by one national tv channel that much as RÚV on Iceland. It is something that Icelandic people love and what they do is also incredible! They’re not just a national television channel, they’ve also shown me the artistic side of Icelandic people. Amazing!

Television-free Thursdays until 1st of October 1987

To begin with for over 50 years ago, the transmissions of RÚV only took place on Wednesdays and Fridays. Then they gradually expanded to the rest of the week through the years, but as the only tv channel in the world they choose that there would be no transmissions on Thursdays until 1st of October 1987. This was set so that Icelandic people learned more about life itself. And if that wasn’t odd enough, RÚV had no broadcast at all in July month until 1983.

But even though the channel started to broadcast on Thursdays also, the channel programing schedule haven’t changed much since 1987. The hours that the tv channel broadcasts now is a bit longer, but not much!

As late as 2017, RÚV only airs for about 8 hours each day during the week, starting at around 4.35pm (16.35), and ending at around 0.35am (00.35) in the weekdays. The number of hours of television aired per week changes every weeks an days, with transmissions during the weekends beeing the longest. RÚV is now starting at 7am on Saturdays and Sundays. During the week, however, television transmissions still starts between 3pm (15.00) and 5:30pm (17.30) and ends between 0:00am (0.00) and 1:30am (1.30). During downtime, the station carries its’ daily schedule and a news ticker, complete with audio from Rás 2 (Channel 2). This makes RÚV the only tv channel in Europe that do have broadcast brakes, which I find very interesting now in the stressfull 2017!

Yes, even NRK in Norway and DR in Denmark now broadcasts around 24 hours. And thats even in the summertime, when NRK especially had it shortest broadcasts before. I really miss those times as it sort of felt correctly. Why need to watch television all the time? Why the need for it? Now NRK and DR uses the times outside of prime-time hours for repeating many of their programs and send some really odd and boring BBC drama series. Seriouslly its better to just not broadcast if thats everything you have to broadcast.

The analog TV transmission ended in 2014 on Iceland, with Vodafone Iceland signed an agreement with RÚV on 27th of March 2013. So, since then

So, it seems like Iceland was one of the first countries in the world to become fully digital. With a population of around 330.000, then its not that hard. But Iceland is not a small island. So, that is quite an achievement.

The channel is also commercial. So many of its programs is interrupted with commercial breaks. So, RÚV is the only national broadcaster in the Nordic countries that does that. But with the prices for tv shows and entertainment these days. Its understandable and it seems like the Icelandic people like it.

Including the regular programming where Frettir (News) at 19.00 is the most respected news program on Iceland (a bit like Dagsrevyen on NRK in Norway at 19.00, Rapport on SVT at 19.30 or Wiadomosci on TVP1 at 19.30), this channel is also broadcasting world’s most watched music show, which is known as Eurovision Song Contest. I watched this year Eurovision a bit on RÚV and I noticed that the channel have commercial breaks in the show. Making the live show for people in Iceland upto 2min delayed. I guess thats because RÚV needs to adjust the commercial breaks? The host was fun to listen to also. Yes, we tend to switch between SVT and NRK. But this year also RÚV got a watch from all of us at the Eurovision Song Contest party. Great thing!

Their logo makes them loved. They’ve never changed it seems and that loyality means a lot even if you do have commercials. They really put lots of effort in identifying their channel which is really great. NRK , SVT, TVP1 and even BBC have changed too much. They are also respected, but RÚV love is quite unique and they deserve it.

Fantastic idents which includes amazing graphics and music

I did watch RÚV a lot for the last 3 years on-line. I loved the graphics. Especially some of their idents are top! Especially with the thematic themes showing the nature of Iceland where the RÚV logo rotates and baam moves nicely to the left side with music that is so unique and excellent done.

Now it seems that RÚV have changed a bit with 3D ball with RÚV logo and RÚV letters even showing. This is also pretty awesome! However, I miss those theme idents that they had before a bit. Also they have changed the program schedule music, which had some variations before. Now its only the same, however the new tune is pretty nice! I just hoped that RÚV would use this bit a bit more!

The logo however, still stays the same all the time and for me its pretty well made logo that RÚV needs to use for all eternity. Becasue it’s one of worlds best tv logos for sure. Why does a tv channel logo need to be letters, when a symbol like this works much better? Mysterious and wonderful logo for sure! People around the world should know more about it for sure! It is too beutiful to not be mentioned.

RÚV is for sure a great tv channel for the Icelandic people. It promotes the Icelandic culture and language. TV series and movies is subtitled like in the other Nordic countries and they show the diversity on Iceland. A really nice channel that everyone on Iceland should be proud of. Don’t ever begin to broadcast 24 hours. Please…! Quality is more important than quantity you know!